


Boney M's Miscellany

by Boney_M



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2018-08-12 09:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7929508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boney_M/pseuds/Boney_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and pieces that don't deserve full story status on their own, but I still wanted to share.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Nick!" There was an off-tempo bludgeoning on Nick's chamber door as some tiny, angry mammal tried to gain access. With a groan, he hauled himself off the fold-out sofa-bed and slouched his way towards the door, rubbing at his eyes blearily. Not bothering with the peephole, he fumbled with the locks and bolts and swung the door open, staring reproachfully at the creature that had torn him from his slumber.

Finnick was thoroughly, rascally drunk. If the fact that he had been leaning on the door as it opened and ended up sprawled on the ground wasn't enough, the sheer reek of alcohol nailed the point home. "You got any idea what time it is, Finnick?"

"Fuck, why'd you do that for?" Finnick managed to haul himself upright after a couple of false starts, and leaned on the doorframe to keep from tumbling over again.

"All I did was open my door. You shouldn't have been leaning on it. How much have you had to drink?"

Finnick snorted. "Enough that Frank refused to let me in my van! I wasn't gonna fuckin' drive anywhere, but I wasn't gonna tell him I lived in there. So I got him to drop me off here instead."

"Your bowling buddy, Frank?"

"Not anymore! The team's done for, Nick! Jim's moving away and since Frank's kid's soccer practice is on bowling night and Frank's gonna be the coach next term, we figured it's not worth looking to replace him just to have to dissolve it in a couple months anyway."

"Aw, I'm sorry. I know you love bowling." Nick moved aside and waved Finnick into the room, and Finnick staggered in and tried to sit on the edge of the bed, but overshot and ended up lying flat on his back.

"Ah shit, don't worry about it. Way of the world, isn't it? Every fucking thing ends. Jim's going. Frank's tied up with his family. Even you're going legit. I'm running out of buddies fast." Finnick's tone was forcedly light, but Nick recognized the undertone of anguish.

"Hey, don't say that." Nick sat himself down on the bed next to Finnick. "I'm just gonna be at the academy for a few months, we'll still hang out after I get back."

"Sure, you say that now." Finnick hauled himself back upright unsteadily. "But once you're a cop, I'm gonna be the fuckin' walking talking reminder of your criminal past. I'm gonna be what you left behind to go straight, with your little bunny buddy."

Nick put his paw on Finnick's shoulder. "It's not like that, man. Look, yeah, for Carrots, I'm gonna be a cop. But for you? I'd be a crooked cop, if that's what it takes."

"You really mean that?" Finnick looked up at Nick, his big adorable eyes filled with unshed tears.

"Absolutely."

Finnick collapsed again, but sideways this time, throwing his weight against Nick's chest and balling his fists up in Nick's fur. "You're the best, my mammal."

Nick threw a comfortable arm around Finnick's shoulders. "Don't sweat it, buddy. You and me will always be tight, even if we ain't gonna be hustling together." There was a long, comfortable silence as the two of them hugged it out. "So is this a drive-by hugging, or do you need a place to crash?"

"You cool with it?"

"Of course. After the amount of times I've slept in your van, you're always welcome in my place."

\---

Finnick stirred, ignoring the sharp pang of a building hangover with long practice and trying to assemble his thoughts. He'd gone drinking with his bowling buddies last night and then... well, after that it was a blur. Maybe he shouldn't have been drinking drinks the same size as his teammates were, but after the waitress had handed him a kid's menu and the bartender had spent a solid minute examining his ID, he had felt the need to compensate.

Whatever he had done, it must have ended well, because instead of the tiny, lumpy mattress in his van he was on a slightly less lumpy and much larger mattress in an actual building. And he had a pair of arms wrapped around him. Even when he was black-out drunk, he still had it, he thought with a rush of pride.

Feeling his bed buddy start to stir, he reached back, ran a paw over their thigh, and murmured "g'morning, gorgeous."

"Never realized you felt that way," came the sleepy reply, and Finnick's eyes slammed open, even as a fresh stab of pain through his head made him regret it. Him going rigid in Nick's arms must have tipped him off, because he continued "what, thought I was last night's conquest?"

"So, uh... take it you weren't, then?"

Nick snorted. "You give yourself too much credit. You just needed a place to stay the night." Nick's took his arms from around Finnick and ruffled his ears fondly.

Finnick's brow furrowed as memories started to trickle back in. "That's right, I- ah, shit. I got all weepy on you."

"Yeah, you did. I won't tease you about it if you don't say anything about my sleep-cuddling instincts."

"Deal."

Nick hauled himself upright and yawned, scratching at his chest. "Want to grab breakfast? There's a cafe near here that does good eggs on toast for cheap."

"Sounds good. I need some food in me before I start heading back to the bar to get my van." Finnick swung his legs over the edge of the bed and used them as leverage to drag the top half of his body upright, gritting his teeth against the wave of dizziness that caused. "Oh, and Nick?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Nick smiled. "Any time."


	2. Ozzy's Bad Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ozzy belongs to Weaver. http://tgweaver.tumblr.com/
> 
> Warning: Depressing

Ozzy plucked at the strings of his guitar aimlessly, knowing that it wasn't going to entertain him, and that if he actually tried it would just end up frustrating him. But at the same time, he had to do something to try and distract himself, even though he knew it would ultimately end in failure. What was that myth about the guy that kept trying to roll the boulder up the hill and it always kept rolling back down?

He'd missed a day of his medication. He hadn't meant to, the reminder he had set had gone off and he'd gotten the pills out of the drawer he kept them in and put them on the counter while he went to get a drink to wash it down with but he'd gotten sidetracked. Then today when the alarm went off he'd gone to get the pills and found them on the counter and realized why he was starting to feel so listless.

He didn't feel sad. Feeling sad would be alright. There could be a sort of melodramatic beauty to sadness. The problem was he didn't feel anything, except tired. The sort of soul-deep weariness that manifested as a heaviness in his chest that made every breath inhaled a struggle and every exhale a sigh.

More than anything, he wished he was more literally tired so he could go to sleep and hopefully not wake up until the medication had kicked in. 

(the cold, detached voice deep inside him noted that if he didn't wake up at all, that wouldn't be so bad, either. at times like this, he struggled to disagree)

He knew that he wasn't tired enough yet, and wouldn't be for... probably three, four more hours. And if he tried now, chances were his thoughts would go nowhere good. Some of the worst experiences of his life were just staring up at the roof when sleep eluded him, while his thoughts spiraled deeper and he analyzed his entire life, every single missed opportunity, every failed ambition, everything he'd fucked up. The way the lives of everyone he cared about would have been better if he'd been able to overcome his issues, if he'd made better decisions, if he'd been a better person.

He knew this feeling was temporary, that in a couple of days when his neurochemistry normalized and his medication kicked back in all of this would seem completely ridiculous. But that didn't blunt the yawning emptiness inside him.

He should leave his apartment and find someone. Marty, maybe, or the twins. He knew all of them would be outraged if he knew that he was keeping his problems from them again. But at times like this, the only positive thought that even kinda warmed him was the bitter pride he felt at not inflicting his own stupid issues on his friends.

So Ozzy continued strumming tuneless nothings on his guitar while staring at the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it's pretty much autobiographical. I'm still self-aware enough to realize how disgustingly self-indulgent this is. Don't worry, I'll be back to my normal self in a day or two.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rinehart belongs to to http://wynnposts.tumblr.com/, as does this take on Violet.
> 
> If I write more of this pairing I'll move this to a Rinehart-Violet snippet story but for now it lives in miscellany.

The coffee table and its contents filled his vision from where he laid on the couch. There was a newspaper open to a half-finished crossword, discarded in disgust, and an empty mug left spitefully atop it, leaving a ring-shaped stain blotching out where felidae had been mistakenly put in place of felinae. A desk toy, two pieces of oddly twisted metal tangled together, that in theory could be untangled but in practice had almost ended up flung across the room and instead had been very carefully placed on the very farthest side of the coffee table. A TV guide that promised nothing of interest, no matter how many times it was reread, and a remote that he had taken the battery cover off and replaced a hundred times or more.

On the far side of it was the glowing LCD display of the DVD player's clock. Rinehart refused to let his eyes focus on it. If he kept himself from acknowledging it for long enough, maybe it will have changed when he finally gave in.

Energy filled his still body, finding what outlets it could, his tail twitching and his claws drumming disjointed rhythms in the armrest. Every now and then they'd catch on the fibers, and every time he had to resist the urge to start picking at it and unravel the covering of the couch, thread by thread. If he was at home he'd probably had given in by now, but then if he was at home then the couch he was lying on would be a whole lot less comfortable.

He fought down the urge to make another cup of coffee. He didn't really want another cup of coffee, but the process of making it would have filled an otherwise interminable minute. He definitely didn't need more energy.

Maybe he should start drinking tea, he thought. His eyes drifted towards the kitchen, trying to remember where Violet kept her tea. But his mind skipped ahead, and he pictured himself sitting in front of an experimental cup of tea that it turned out he despised, but now with company, and he couldn't just tip it away without giving offence, and so he'd have to drink the whole thing and feign enjoyment...

Maybe he should go out, just for a bit. He wondered if Violet needed anything - groceries, perhaps. But he knew better than to interrupt her. Not when the door to her office was closed.

Then, finally, his ears twitched as they picked up the sounds they had been straining for - the almost-muffled reverberation of the external door swinging closed. Lying stock-still to keep from missing anything, his ears strained for the slightest noise escaping the soundproofed confines of the room he was now staring at the door of. Minutes crept past, but in anticipation now, rather than boredom.

There. The ever-so-faint thunk of an office chair hitting the lowest point it could go, right on the edge of hearing. He couldn't stop a smile from spreading across his face. He couldn't hear the sound of the rabbit hopping from said chair, but he could imagine it, and he lifted himself out of his sprawl, scooting up the couch until there was approximately one rabbit's worth of space at his feet.

'What light through yonder window breaks?' he thought to himself, a self-mocking smirt flitting across his face, and for a heartbeat he was distracted by wondering if the line would still scan if he replaced 'window' with 'door', and then said door finally opened. The rabbit leaning against the doorframe was looking straight at him, a smile on her face to match his, but slightly exasperated, too. "You haven't been waiting for me, have you?" she asked, and her voice- well, he could spend volumes in describing her voice, but at the moment he was most captured by that endearingly stilted cadence she got when she'd been in professional mode all day, and was still trying to remember how to talk normally.

He just shrugged, not even trying to look sheepish at being caught, and she huffed at him. But she tottered over on unsteady legs and collapsed onto the couch at his feet, the remains of her breath driven out of her with an 'oof'.

The problem was pride. Violet's home office had a wonderful desk, all stained hardwood and brass fittings - if it wasn't an antique it was doing a damn good impression of one. It was also built for a mammal larger than a rabbit. So Violet raised her chair as high as it would go and sat as tall as she could so as not to be dwarfed by her desk, but she thought, she had explained to him previously, that she couldn't be properly professional with her legs dangling in empty air like a schoolchild. So instead - and Rinehart wasn't quite sure how this was any better - she sat cross-legged in her oversize officechair. And after an entire day spent sitting like that, her legs weren't sure whether they were asleep or cramped.

So Rinehart waited, and sure enough she was unable to resist. She swivelled in place until she was facing him opposite the couch and stretched out her legs towards him, shivering in pleasure as she finally stretched her aching muscles, her eyes flickering closed in that simplest of pleasures.

And just like countless times before, that was when he struck.

His paws encircled her lower thighs gently but firmly, stifling the tremors running through her aching muscles, and she shot him a look - a look almost, but not quite, identical to her actually annoyed look. Her actually annoyed look would send a spike of misery through his heart. This look caused his smile to widen.

With a soft, gentle strokes he ran his paws down her legs to her ankles, and then back up to her thighs to start again, rubbing feeling back into her legs, and her playfully annoyed look was swept away as her eyes flickered close in pleasure, a hum of unconscious approval escaping from her. From where he was laying he could see most of her legs, and as always he was mildly surprised by the powerful rabbit thigh muscles she kept hidden away behind those skirts of hers. He could feel them shifting under his paws as she wriggled her legs in her grip. Legs that could probably kick his organs out surrendered to the soft grip of his paws as he gave a squeeze, laying still once more, and with every stroke along the length of her leg he reached a little higher. It was a constant, gentle escalation, and at some point, she would get up and go to make a cup of tea for herself. A deniable escalation, where everyone could back off at any moment and pretend it never happened - naughty enough to thrill, but entirely safe. That was the unspoken theory, anyway.

At some point - he'd been lost in the softness of the fur under his paws for a delightful eternity - it occurred to him that he was getting pretty high up her leg and she hadn't gotten up to make her traditional cup of tea. His eyes widened as he processed this, even as his paws continued their gradual, inexorable advance. Maybe she had fallen asleep- but no, when he looked up he could see that even though her eyes were mostly closed, they were still open a slit and her gaze was locked on him, an arch little smile on her lips. And he couldn't help but notice that the advance of his paws had ridden her skirt up even further and out of the corner of his eye, standing out among the dark grey of her fur and the dark green of her skirt was just a glimpse of white.

Last stroke, he said to himself. Things were getting dangerous. And then the next was the last one. And maybe he could go just one more. And then there was a hint of sensation as his paws grazed fabric that definitely wasn't the dress, and then he was definitely rubbing his paws against the edge and oh gosh wasn't that an interesting pattern in the fabric, and if he went any further there wouldn't be any further to go, and when he braved a look down he found her... not quite on display, because from any other angle but the one he had she was still quite covered by her skirt, but from where he was sitting he could see everything and oh gosh...

His eyes lingered there for a small eternity, his paws stilled, not just because of what he was looking at but because he was afraid of what he'd find when he looked up at her eyes. Would she be shocked? Expectant? Thrilled? He didn't know what he expected. He didn't know what he hoped for. He didn't know what he feared.

But he gathered his courage and tore his gaze away and met hers, and what he found there was a warm smile, understanding and proud, with just a slight bite of the lip revealing the tinge of arousal beneath it all. And the relief must have shown in his own expression, because she reached out with a paw and cupped his cheek. But just for a moment, because he was just out of reach and she had to lean forward awkwardly to reach, and then she fell back against the armrest with a grunt. He smiled, and she smiled.

She shifted slowly, his paws trailing down her thighs as she pulled gently, reluctantly, away from the grip he seemed unable or unwilling to either release or escalate. "I'm going to make a cup of tea," she announced, like she hadn't had the paws of a fox all the way up her skirt a heartbeat before. "Want one?"

He opened his mouth to refuse, then paused. "Sure," he heard himself say. "I'll try a cup."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and Equentin belong to https://zhanbao.tumblr.com
> 
> Warning: lewd.

After a long, heavy silence, Emily's eyes travelled back up and found Equentin's eyes once more. "Okay, wow."

Equentin squirmed under her gaze, embarassed, his hooves crossing over his chest protectively. "Is that a good wow or a bad wow?"

"It's a wow." Her eyes were drawn downwards again, her blush growing more intense. "I mean, I guess I kinda figured it would be, you know, but..." Her eyes travelled up and down. "Wow." She reached out with a paw, hesitated, and glanced upwards once more, seeking permission. She found it in his face, mixed with apprehension and anticipation, and she continued the movement, lightly touching it with her paw. It was radiating heat in a way that took her by surprise, and the texture, soft to the touch but firm beneath, was completely different to what she had expected.

Emboldened, she gripped it firmly in her paw. She'd been waiting and hoping for this for so long, and now that it was finally here she forced herself to ignore her own apprehension, quelling a shaking in her paw by gripping harder - Equentin winced slightly, but said nothing, just biting his lip. She brought it closer to her, staring at it in fascination and a little nervousness.

She'd put it off long enough. She'd waited long enough. The moment was here, and she was going to sieze it - before she could talk herself out of it.

She leaned forward and wrapped her mouth around it.

She realized instantly that her enthusiasm had gotten the better of her. She had stuffed far too much of it inside her mouth, and as she moaned in surprise, her rough tongue pressing against the intruder instinctively, it exploded inside her mouth unexpectedly, the savoury taste flooding her senses and causing her to recoil in surprise. She swallowed as much as she could as she pulled the spurting obstruction free of her mouth, liquid spilling from her lips and dripping down her chin.

\---

A brief coughing fit later with the apologetic horse standing over her, Emily had finally regained her breath. Equentin looked sheepish. "Sorry about that. I got a little carried away."

Emily shook her head. "It's okay, it just took me by surprise." She smacked her lips thoughtfully, then took a second, more careful bite of the slice of pizza in her paw, carefully managing the sauce that spilled out. She chewed and swallowed, and nodded decisively. "Yeah, you definitely got carried away with the sauce, but that's easily fixed. Apart from that, this is a pretty decent pizza. Congratulations."

Equentin blinked in shock, then beamed in joy. He had been trying for what felt like forever, and he'd finally figured out how to make pizza without his goddamn hooves sabotaging him.

Emily took another bite, then nodded again and put it back down, wiping her hand on her apron. "Well, we had a deal, and now I owe you a blowjob. Drop your pants."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some spur-of-the-moment bullying of zhan, who insists that the pizzafriends are ONLY FRIENDS.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny bit of Rinehart/Violet fluff

"Rinehart," Violet said musingly.

"Mm?" replied the fox in question, looking up.

"Rine. Hart." She rolled the word around in her mouth thoughtfully. "Ri-en-hart. Ry-n-hart."

"Rinehart," he corrected, his lips twitching into a smile.

"Rinnhordt," she retorted, and giggled as the fox stuck his tongue out at her.

Silence returned to the room, until Rinehart's curiousity overwhelmed him. "So why are you batting my name about like a cub with a cornered beetle?"

"We've been dating now for... hmm..."

"Four months, three days. Or six days, if you count that dinner."

Violet frowned. "You don't?"

"We didn't kiss until the Monday after."

Her frown melted into a smile as she recalled. "Anyway," she finally said, shaking herself free of the recollection, "it occurred to me that I should have some sort of pet name for you at this point. But your name is stubborn."

"Hmm..." Rinehart considered. "Vi-o-let. Vy. Vee. Vi-o-la." He smiled. "Yours is fun to play with. Vi-o-let-ta."

"As long as you don't go with 'vile'," she mused. "Rine-hart... 'running stag'? Seems a strange name, for a fox."

"Please don't get into the etymology," he whined.

"Oh? Something good, then?" She pondered it for a while, then reached over to the coffee table and grabbed her phone as Rinehart huffed. In moment she had found what she was looking for. "'Rine - dialectal, to touch.' So if hart is literally heart..." Rinehart grimaced and nodded. Violet looked at him, and smiled wordlessly. After a moment, Rinehart couldn't help but return it.

"I guess I did try to live up to it..." Rinehart finally muttered, self-consciously.

Violet just smiled. "Well, you certainly touched mine."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Rinehart/Violet fluff. Maybe I should separate them off into their own story.

At the first hint of jingling keys in the air, Rinehart felt a smile spread across his face as he turned his attention from the book he was reading. There was a long moment of anticipation filled with the clink of metal on metal, and finally the door swung open, revealing the one guest that was welcome in his apartment: Violet.

But the smile faded as he took in the rabbit's closed-off expression and the tension in the way she held herself, and with a nod of greeting to him she turned and walked into the bathroom. A moment later the sound of running water filled the air, and moments after that the scent of the strawberry bath gel that Violet favoured reached his nose. "Bad day, huh," he called out, more a statement than a question. Usually it was him that was taking refuge from the world in Violet's apartment instead of vice versa, but sometimes the roles were reversed, especially when Violet needed a good, long soak to unwind, something her own apartment couldn't provide.

Violet's answer, if there was any, was masked by the splashing of running water, but he didn't mind. If she felt like talking about it, he knew that she'd talk his ear off about whatever it was that was bugging her, and if she didn't then no amount of prying would get it loose. It annoyed him sometimes that the very reticence the rabbit went out of her way to burrow through in him was apparently ironclad in her, but only sometimes.

He turned his attention back to the book, but he found himself unable to focus on the words, his attention instead captured by the sound of the bath growing softer as the water level rose towards the tap. At last it was cut off, and Rinehart's ears strained. Then, softly, seemingly sheepishly, the bathroom door was gently closed.

He grinned wryly at the disappointment he felt, and the tangled mess of tentative hopes and confused daydreams that lay behind it. No click of the lock engaging, he found himself noting. He didn't know what to read into that, or what he could do with that information, but he definitely noted it.

Then, muffled by the closed door, he heard the sloshing of a small body submerging itself in the tub. And with the thoughts that sound brought forth in him, he knew that the book was going to remain unable to capture his attention for the foreseeable future.

\---

Violet gave a long, heartfelt sigh as she floated in the tub, a verbal manifestation of her frustrations finally working themselves free and floating away. Enclosed in warm water and silence, it was so much easier to console herself with the fact that she had done her best and now it was up to her client to make their decisions.

What was that saying that you weren't supposed to use in modern society? "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

The pointless stubbornness of mammals never ceased to amaze her. Here they were, paying her by the hour to advise them on a subject she was infinitely more qualified than they to make judgements on than they were, and they were still more likely than not to dig in their heels if the path to improvement seemed like it might be even slightly uncomfortable or inconvenient. Things would be so much easier if they just trusted her.

Like Rinehart did, she found herself thinking. More and more lately she found herself comparing clients unfavourably to the fox who's bathroom she had just commandeered. Sure, his hardheadedness had made it difficult to find a course forward that was acceptable to him, but in the end he had recognized that Violet's was the only sure path out of the state he had gotten himself in, and ever since he had been almost entirely cooperative with his treatment.

Not that the treatment was at all conventional. The professional distance that she was supposed to maintain with her clients had been utterly obliterated in Rinehart's case, an escalation of closeness that had been finally acknowledged when they had exchanged keys. Rinehart was often over at her place when he needed to escape from being alone with his thoughts, and she had found herself similarly seeking out Rinehart's apartment as a sanctuary when the rest of the world proved too frustrating for her to want to acknowledge, at least for a while.

So, she thought, it was probably for the best that the rest of her clients didn't take after the fox. That would make her personal life far too complicated.

She allowed her eyes to refocus, and they crossed as she finally noticed the errant blob of bubbles that had perched itself on the tip of her nose. She scowled as all the twitching she could muster completely failed to shift the unwanted passenger. Finally, she gave up to the inevitable and swiped it off with one paw, sending the blob flying to rejoin the mounds of bubbled that covered the surface of the water.

Now that none of them were decorating her face, she found herself smiling at the bubbles. Their smell and the faint fizzle of noise on the edge of hearing of dozens of minute bubbles popping every second were a reliable ally in times of stress, and always had been, all the way back to group baths with her littermates when she was barely more than a newborn.

But it was not infallible, and a minor but growing imperfection in the moment ate away at the soothing effects of the bath. She frowned down at where her stomach would be under the bubbles, resenting the pangs of hunger that had just begun to surface and intrude on her peace. That was the bath ruined, she thought with a scowl. Either she floated there and tried and failed to ignore the growing hunger, or she abandoned the bath to get dressed once more and seek out food - and even if she didn't drain it, by the time she got back the water would be tepid and the bubbles long gone.

But she found her eyes drifting to the door as a third possibility occured to her. It wasn't even locked...

She had found herself oddly torn by the door lock, as she had belatedly realized the act of exhibitionism she had almost embarked upon after filling the bath and closed the door. She had paused with her hand on the knob for a moment that stretched for what felt like minutes. Should she lock it? Why wouldn't she lock it? Why would she? Would it mean something if she did? Would it mean something if she didn't? She knew the choice she made would be known to Rinehart, because even though she was sure that he'd never try the handle uninvited - and she had to quash further thoughts down the road of invitations - but his sharp fox ears were even now telling him that the door hadn't been locked yet.

So she had chosen inaction over action, and thrust away her thoughts on that tiny little nothing that had been blown up in her mind into a massive decision as she returned to the bath. But now the results of that decision meant that there was a solution to her hunger that didn't involve abandoning her current comfort.

She looked thoughtfully down at the layer of bubbles that completely covered her body.

\---

Rinehart forced himself to focus solely on the rabbit's face as he used the chopsticks to lower the dumpling to her waiting mouth. The bubbles that covered the surface of the water ensured that even if his gaze wandered he probably wouldn't see anything, but the fact that there was nothing but water and bubbles between his gaze and Violet's bare fur burned in his mind.

Violet gripped the dumpling in her teeth, and a faint hum of pleasure escaped her as she began to chew. The dumplings themselves were nothing special, some leftover takeaway that he'd reheated in the microwave, but the bunny was savouring them anyway. Perhaps the sheer hedonism of being fed while she bathed enhanced the pleasure, or perhaps she was simply happy to eat and relax after a long and tiring day. Whatever the reason, it filled him with warmth that he could help her achieve some small piece of happiness.

So he sat on the little footstool next to the bath and kept his gaze resolutely fixed on those eyes the colour of her name. She was squinting slightly as she gazed back up at him and looking oddly naked without her glasses, which just highlighted to him how bare the rest of her body was. He thrust those thoughts away and lowered another tidbit for her to enjoy.

\---

Violet sighed in contentment as the final dumpling settled in her stomach, smiling up at the fox who had fed it to her. Some distant part of herself was aghast at having one of her patients feed her tidbits while she bathed, but that part was exhausted after a long day of work and easily ignored. The part of Violet that was a woman rather than a therapist was currently in supremacy, and that part of her revelled in the warmth and the sated hunger and even in the deer-in-the-headlights expression that was stamped upon Rinehart's face as he tried to keep his eyes from wandering.

As she floated, she considered the fox. When she had called him in, he had dragged over a footstool from its customary place in front of the sink. It was no different to the dozens she had seen in her lifetime, a necessity for a rabbit in buildings designed for slightly larger mammals, and she was so used to the little footstools being a part of her life that it never even occurred to her to question it's presence in Rinehart's apartment. But it had just occurred to her that it had no reason to be there - except as a small, unprompted, unmentioned gesture to make his apartment slightly more welcoming to a rabbit. Her smile widened.

While she had been considering the footstool, Rinehart had dropped the chopsticks inside the box that had contained the dumplings and was now hesitating, his paw resting on the rim of the bathtub. Before he could make up his mind to move, Violet reached out and placed her paw on his. He smiled down at her, and she returned it.

They remained there for a moment that stretched into minutes, as the bathwater slowly cooled and the piles of bubbles atop the water was reduced to a thin, barely-opaque film, and with a final squeeze Violet released Rinehart's paw. He hesitated there for a moment longer, and Violet raised an eyebrow at him, not in a challenge or in expectation but rather in a wordless acknowledgement that an opportunity existed, if he wished to take it. And finally he did, full of nervous energy as he forced himself to act, leaning down with almost exaggerated tenderness to place a kiss on her lips. It wasn't the first they'd kissed, and it was soft and gentle, but it sent lightning through her nonetheless as she hummed in pleasure against his mouth. And then he rose and left at a speed just short of fleeing, and she smiled to herself as she sat up in the bath, stretching her arms and legs to wake her muscles back up before pulling the plug and rising to her feet.

A few minutes later, with her fur mostly dry and wrapped in a towel, she emerged from the bathroom and found Rinehart back on the couch, his eyes on a book that he was clearly unable to concentrate on. He looked up as she approached, his eyes searching her face for any hint of reproach or regret, but she broadcast nothing but warmth and happiness as she circled the couch to stand behind him, her arms encircling his neck as she pressed her cheek to his. One of her paws slipped under the collar of his shirt and rested on his chest just above his heart, and she could feel it hammering out a frenzied tempo. She remained there, her breath tickling his whiskers, until it finally began to slow, and kissed him softly on the cheek before rising once more and returning to the bathroom to get dressed.


End file.
